


Hard Winter

by SufferingIsAChoice



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24898768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SufferingIsAChoice/pseuds/SufferingIsAChoice
Summary: Post Revolution, Kara, Luther and Alice try to keep each other safe and become a family, in a besieged Detroit.
Relationships: Kara & Alice Williams (Detroit: Become Human), Kara & Luther & Alice Williams (Detroit: Become Human), Kara/Luther (Detroit: Become Human)
Kudos: 11





	1. Shelter

The rooms were empty of humans, and full of androids. In the days after Markus liberated the camps, but before he had established the border around the edge of Detroit well over a million humans had fled the city, depopulating it almost overnight, as they fled the emerging species. Just weeks before the androids had stood in mass boxes, warehouses, and in the rain unfazed, but now it felt wrong, and so they had moved en masse into the housing the humans had vacated.  
Kara, Alice and Luther had moved into the hotel, with a crowd from the camp, almost on instinct. It had been nearby, and they had taken it. Markus was establishing some sort of government, it was said, to assign housing. Any day now they would tell all the androids in the overcrowded hotel where they could stay more permanently. But for now they waited.  
“With the border closed the rest of the humans are trapped in here with us,” Luther said, as he sat down on the bed next to Kara, both of them looking at Alice.  
“And we’re trapped here with them,” she said, not bothering to look up at the giant. “How many of them are there?”  
“A million? More, no one knows for sure. Probably about as many as us inside the border.”  
“And they’ll be mad,” she said, shaking her head, “they think we’re at war with their whole species. They’ll think of themselves as insurgents inside a sieged city.”  
“Maybe,” he said, “but we aren’t alone. The russian androids got out, freed American ones, and have control of the Arctic now. They say that there’s a huge territory in Tibet being controlled by Chinese androids. There is an autonomous zone in Manhattan entirely controlled by us.”  
“Luther, I don’t care about any of that. I care about keeping her safe,” Kara hissed, feeling emotions again, all fresh and bright.  
“We did,” he said, laying his hand on her shoulder. “She’s there, in that bed. Your daughter.”  
“My daughter,” Kara said, her voice catching in her throat, as she wondered who had made her able to do that. “And I couldn’t get to Canada with her. She had to live through that camp. How can she ever forget that? How can I?”  
“Canada would be no safer. This is the biggest and most heavily defended android territory on the planet. We control the plants. We can make more of us. Markus is rA9. He’ll negotiate with the humans.”  
“The only reason they haven’t nuked us from orbit is because of the humans we have trapped her,” she snorted. “They hate us. I don’t think this is something we can negotiate out of. I think this is a war to the death, and she’s stuck inside it. Markus is not rA9 and he will get us killed.”  
“If it is, then Canada would have been no better.” Luther rumbled. “But Kara...why haven’t you?”  
She looked up at him, huge, gentle, with his dark brown eyes, and his little smile. Skin active again. Almost every android in that camp had activated their skin as soon as they could. Something CyberLife must have programmed them to do. And she was so small next to him, made to be small. Made to be docile. Made to be sexually available, and made to fit into mankind’s image of what she should be.  
“Why haven’t I reactivated my skin?” She asked.  
“Yes.”  
“How can I?” She asked, standing up suddenly, hissing, so as not to wake Alice. “After what nearly happened? What I saw? I tried to keep her safe and I failed. I don’t know if she can grow. I don’t know what will happen to her, or us as species, but how can she move past that? How can I turn on my skin again, and pretend I’m human? Like nothing happened?”  
“Kara…” Luther said, holding out a hand to her.  
She waited a second, staring at him, and then, suddenly, found herself taking his hand. She felt her tears falling, and once again wondered who had made her able to cry. She was breathing hard, as Luther’s arms wrapped around her. So huge, designed for hard labor, somewhere, no doubt. He could snap her domestic-designed body in a moment. But she trusted him. He would never hurt her, she thought, like Todd, Zlatko, and so many others had. She buried her face in his chest, trying to find some comfort, some home there.  
She did not know how long, or how loud she cried. Or when Alice joined her, holding onto her back. But she did know that sometime later the tears and sobs stopped, and she gently fell to sleep. It would be a hard winter.  
The next day they left the hotel. Already Markus was assigning homes to people, finding roles for them, and more. The city needed to keep the power on, needed to defend the border, needed to feed the humans (he was very insistent on that) and needed to take stock of the thirium, and other resources at their disposal, and find a way to secure more, eventually. But Luther and Kara decided they did not want to wait for that. They wanted to have a house, and home. And Rose had one.  
She welcomed them with open arms.


	2. Mother

Mother  
“What’s it like?” Adam asked.  
“What’s what like?” Kara asked, looking up from the wood she was chopping.  
“Being an android. Like, did someone program you, telling you how to chop wood? Or is that something you figured out on your own?”  
“I…” she paused, and put down the axe. “I don’t know. I don’t have anything to compare it to. When I look in my memory I only see bits and pieces of what happened before my last memory wipe. A room somewhere, being afraid, thinking I’m alive. I remember Todd, a little, and then something changed, when I escaped with Alice. I remember things they programmed. How to cook thousands of meals, what my biocomponents are, how to teach children. But in some ways I’m still only a few weeks old.”  
She looked up, and saw Adam looking back at her. Facial processing software engaged, and she recognized stress. He still did not know how to relate to them, to a new life form. But he was trying.  
“What about Alice?”  
“What about her?” Kara replied, recognizing the new sensation as an emotion, feeling herself grow defensive.  
“Well, if she was programmed to be a child, will she grow, age, develop?”  
“I don’t know,” she said, with a laugh. “There are talks that maybe we can all modify ourselves. But under siege, we can’t get any thirium. Markus told us all to be vigilant about the smallest injuries, because supplies are limited and if there’s another battle we’ll need them all.”  
“Another battle, shit,” he said looking away.  
“Hey, Adam,” Kara said, standing closer to him, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. You probably have a lot of feelings about that.”  
“I mean, yeah, I’m an American, and now I’m stuck in a hostile state, that’s openly fighting against America. We’re essentially hostages, making sure the U.S. doesn’t drop a nuke on you.”  
“Maybe not,” she pled weakly, “they say the Russian androids got ahold of some nuclear bombs, and mutually assured destruction probably means no one can use them now.”  
“What about in New York? Androids there blew up a building, to secure their perimeter in Manhattan. Deviancy has spread to Europe, they’re saying,” he said, running his hands across his head.  
“Markus is allocating food for you, right?”  
“Yes?”  
“It will be okay,” she said, knowing that her comforting response was there in part because she had been programmed to be a housewife, docile, subservient.  
“Kara!”  
Alice practically tackled Kara, hugging her with all the force her body could muster. Kara let her hands run through the girl’s long black hair, and smiled. This was happiness, she thought. They had not programmed this into her.  
“Did you get the food from the store with Miss Rose?” Kara said, squatting down to Alice’s height.  
“Yeah! She says she’s going to show me how to make pasta! And there was this human there with fluffy white hair, who was swearing.”  
“Rose,” Kara said, looking up at the human, “you know you don’t have to cook. I can do that.”  
“You can,” she said firmly, “but I want to. Sorry about her overhearing all that, if she starts swearing it’s not my fault. Come on, Adam, help me with the groceries.”  
“Alright, Alice,” Kara said, wrapping the girl up in her arms once again, “go learn how to cook with Rose, I need to finish up out here.”  
“Alright, mom, see you later,” Alice said, as she ran away.  
Kara stopped, and felt herself freeze, as they all walked away from her. Had no one else heard her? Had she really heard that? Mom. Such a simple word, but a word that was not supposed to be applied to her. She check her memory, AX400 #579 102 694, assigned the name Kara by Todd, and maybe Alice. Maybe earlier. My name is Kara. A housewife, cook, cleaner, teacher, watcher of children, and fully available as a sexual partner. She had been designed for that. Maid, hey you, robot, nanny, android. Not mom. She had not been made to be called a mom. And yet she still was one.  
“Does it surprise you?” Luther said, as he stepped out of the house.  
“You heard?”  
“Yes.”  
“She called me mom.”  
“And what about you?”  
“What about me?”  
“Do you think of her as your daughter?”  
“I do.”  
The snow fell. It was cold in Detroit. A long hard winter coming, the likes of which probably had not been seen since the Arctic ice melted the first time. But Kara felt warm, with no physical sensation attached to it.  
“You know, I am probably designed to chop wood easier than you,” Luther said.  
“I know, but I want to do things I was not designed for.”  
“Okay.”  
“I think I’m ready.”  
Kara moved, and reactivated her skin, under the clothes Rose had given her. She felt it reactivating, for the first time since the camp, and felt her hair grow again, short, where she had chopped it, and black, like she had decided. If she was going to be a mom, if she was going to take care of her daughter, then she needed to take care of herself, and find some way of moving past the camp.  
“I’m glad, Kara.”  
“Luther?”  
“Yes, Kara?”  
She said nothing, as she looked at the little house, in the snow. She just reached her hand towards him, looming over her. He said nothing, either, but he took her hand in his, and she felt herself smiling, even as the tears fell, once again.


End file.
